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Sunday, August 1, 2010

The truth...

I was out at lunch with a friend not long ago and we were discussing passion, life passion. My friend has known since he was 5 that he wanted to be a Mathematician. Math is his passion, his life. And whenever we get together, the conversation rolls around to my life and there is this compulsion to sift through my psyche to find out what my passion is. And this lunch date was no different.

"What is the one thing you do that you would be devastated if you could never do again?" he asked me.

"Writing," I said to him.

But it's not what you think. Writing is what I do to save who I really am from who I used to be. It is therapy. I would be devastated if I could never write again because I fear for my own survival if I did not have this form to express myself. I do not write for pleasure. I write to release pain. They are not the same thing.

It is rare that I write something that feels like a truly creative act, that feels like an expression of deep pleasure. My life, however, the one I live in the moments day to day, is my creative act. It is the person I become in each moment to bring joy to my environment, to warm someone's heart with a smile, to make someone laugh or cry, to awaken them to be true to that still voice within them. That is my passion. That is my art. After spending most of my life living for others and being someone not me it takes courage every moment of every day to live from the depths of who I really am. And somehow, for now, that's enough.

So, perhaps, if my friend were to ask me the question again, "What is the one thing you do that you would be devastated if you could never do again?"